About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Monday, January 14, 2013

Human Rights Watch reports:
Syrian forces are using notoriously indiscriminate rockets that
contain explosive submunitions. Evidence indicates that Syrian forces
used BM-21 Grad multi-barrel rocket launchers to deliver cluster
munitions in attacks near the city of Idlib in December 2012 and in
Latamneh, a town northwest of Hama, on January 3, 2013.
These are the first known instances of Syrian use of ground-based
cluster munitions. No information is available on how or when Syria
acquired these cluster munitions, which were made in Egypt. Human Rights
Watch and others have previously reported use of air-dropped cluster
bombs.
Based on interviews with witnesses, analysis of approximately a dozen
videos posted online by local activists, and photographs taken by an
international journalist, Human Rights Watch has concluded that since at
least early December Syrian forces have used BM-21 Grad multi-barrel
rocket launchers to deliver 122mm cluster munition rockets containing
submunitions of the DPICM-type (dual purpose improved conventional
munition).
The attack using these cluster munitions on January 3 on Latamneh
killed one civilian man and wounded 15 people, including women and
children, while another civilian man was killed by an unexploded
submunition left from the attack. Another man, a fighter for the armed
opposition group the Free Syrian Army, was killed on December 5 after
handling an unexploded submunition left from an attack two days earlier
on the village of Banin in Jabal al-Zaweya.

The Soviet-made BM-21 multi-barrel rocket launcher is a truck-mounted
system capable of firing 40 rockets nearly simultaneously. The rockets
have a range from 4 to 40 kilometers and are notorious for their
inability to be accurately targeted due to their lack of a guidance
system. The inaccuracy of these rockets exacerbates the danger from the
wide area effect of the submunitions they contain. Fired in groups, the
rockets can inflict large-scale civilian casualties when used in
residential areas, Human Rights Watch said.
The 122mm cluster munition rockets bear the markings of the Egyptian
state-owned Arab Organization for Industrialization and an Egyptian
company called Sakr Factory for Development Industries. The DPICM
submunitions contained in the rockets are designed for both
antipersonnel and antivehicle purposes. Each DPICM submunition is the
size of a D cell battery and has a distinctive white ribbon. It is not
known if the 122mm rockets are SAKR-18 or SAKR-36 variants, which
contain 72 and 98 submunitions respectively.